Books With Lennon 📚

Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin My rating: 5 of 5 stars This is a masterpiece! 👏🏻 This book made its way to my top favorite books ever. I started reading it with no expectations whatsoever. I first heard about it from Booktube and decided to put it on hold at the library. James Baldwin's writing caught me right from the start. I think the plot was okay, but the incredible writing turns this into an incredible book. I 100% decided to get a physical copy because it was painful to know everything I highlighted was going to get lost since I read it on the library app. “Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.” ― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room View all my reviews

Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart My rating: 3 of 5 stars This book is sad! I spent the last few days reading Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart. It took me some work to finish. Not only to read it but also to process it emotionally. This is a very dark story, and I strongly recommend everyone check all the trigger warnings before diving into it. From a literary point of view, the book is wonderful. It feels like diving into the 1990s in a way that other art forms do not allow us to. As a queer boy who grew up in Brazil in the 90s, a lot of things in the book have resonated with my experience. It reminded me of times I prefer not to remember so well. However, I still fell in love with Mungo and his story. It was lovely, delicate, and harsh, just like real life. Violence is almost a character by itself in Young Mungo, it gives birth to characters and shapes them, their actions, and their bodies. It is a powerful reading experience that sometimes resonates with our own scars. I can only give

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk My rating: 5 of 5 stars This is one of my favorite books ever. I just finished a reread of Fight Club. The last time I read it was around 2012, and it was already a reread then. 12 years later and I still find it fascinating. It hits all the marks for me. The first time I got in touch with the story was watching the movie when I was still in high school, and I was so in love with everything about it. I made horrible decisions in my life because of the cheap philosophy contained in those pages, and I loved every moment and have no regrets. If you watched the movie, reading the book is still a great experience. Chuck Palahniuk has an incredible writing style that uses language in such a fun way. I love the use of repetition which creates a sense of rhythm and aesthetic throughout the whole book. The nihilism. The concepts, the ideas of destroying everything to achieve true enlightenment, all this crap has followed me through my entire adult life and reson

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie My rating: 4 of 5 stars I loved reading Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. ❤ The book is about a Nigerian girl who moves to the US for university. Living all her life in Nigeria, she has never perceived race as a problem, and getting to America, she recognizes herself as black and what race means to the American culture. It is a powerful book. As someone who has immigrated from South America to North America, there were a lot of relatable topics. I have wanted to read immigrant literature for a while, and I feel like I made a great choice to start things up. The only downside is that the book was a little longer than needed. I feel like about 100 pages could be cut out, and the ending was a little rushed. Still, it's a fantastic book! Cheers everybody! View all my reviews

Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong My rating: 5 of 5 stars This was a fantastic experience. I am a huge fan of Ocean Vuong's work. The way he works with language and its relation with the body fascinates me every time I get through his writing. Every poem was worth starting over as soon as it was finished. Five stars! View all my reviews

How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu My rating: 2 of 5 stars I started liking this book a lot, but then it went downhill. I recognize it's an excellent book. It just wasn't for me. I may give a second chance to it. I was interested, but as I entered a very busy time at work, the book suddenly felt like a drag, and I remembered that I wanted to read for fun and not to get bored. At a certain point, I found myself skimming some of the pages and not feeling fully connected to the book, which I totally already do at work, so I don't want to do that during my reading time. I was very close to dnf'ing, but then I went and got myself an Audible trial, blasted the audiobook on my headphones as I played The Sims 4 on a lovely apartment in San Mashyuno, and just finished the hell out of it. Then I realized I hadn't paid enough attention, returned all the chapters, and listened to them again while cooking on 2x speed. The voice actors could barely breathe. Maybe

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin My rating: 4 of 5 stars This book was pretty hyped on the internet, so I decided to pick it up. It is about two friends who meet in childhood and spend their lives making games together. The book got really dark, really quickly. Even though I was really absorbed in reading through, there were somewhat emotionally heavy moments that needed some processing time. Overall it is an interesting, contemporary story, very well written, even though it did feel like reading a masterpiece, it didn't get to any point where I was so pleased that I'd consider giving it 5 starts. I recommend this book if you like games, romance, and loads of drama. View all my reviews

The Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker My rating: 5 of 5 stars I absolutely love the Hellraiser movie franchise and Clive Barker as an artist, so it was very easy for me to love this book as well. I have recently read Piranesi and have been in awe of books that, although super short, still have such a developed universe. It's the type of book I wish I could write myself someday. The novella was short, and I wish we had more time with the Cenobites. I will definitely be progressing to the comic books to see more of The Order of the Gash! Easy 5 stars. View all my reviews

Wind/Pinball: Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973 by Haruki Murakami My rating: 3 of 5 stars These were the first two novels written by Haruki Murakami. I heard about this author on book tube and loved all I heard. I read one of his later books, fell in love with his work, and decided to read his books in publication order. This is clearly a debut novel, it lacks plot and structure but has amazing vibes. It's a real slice-of-life style of fiction where it's just fun to hang around the characters. This is a three and half-starts, I loved the vibes, and I wish I could spend some time drinking beer with the characters in the book. View all my reviews

  Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley My rating: 4 of 5 stars I loved reading this classic. I started randomly after noticing it was free to read classics via Kindle, and I was in for a ride. I absolutely loved Frankenstein, the creature he created, and their relationship. There was a lot of word repetition, which would not meet the standards of today's industries. Overall it was an enjoyable experience, and it felt somewhat up-to-date even though it is a book written in the 1800s. View all my reviews